Walter Defends Sarajevo

Valter brani Sarajevo; War action, BiH, 1972; D: Hajrudin Krvavac, S: Velimir ‘Bata’ Živojinović, Rade Marković, Ljubiša Samardžić, Neda Spasojević

World War II is looming its end. Faced with heavy defeats in the war, the army of the Third Reich plans to move from Sarajevo to Višegrad in order to pick up enough fuel for a retreat from the occupied Yugoslavia. But for quite some time a resistance fighter, known only as Valter, has been causing them headaches. In order to stop him from endangering their operation, the Third Reich sends a spy, Conrad, who will play the fake Valter, gather enough partisans and their trust and ultimately lead them into a trap. But the courageous Valter isn’t fooled that easily – he disguises himself as a German officer and ruins their plan.

“Walter Defends Sarajevo” surprisingly became one of the most popular films from the former Yugoslavia thanks to the fact that it was hugely popular in China, where it was re-run dozens of times on national television. The legendary scene where one Nazi officer asks the other one to finally show him who the mysterious Walter is, and he shows him the whole city of Sarajevo from a hill and tells him: “This is Walter!” was turned into such a famous viral video that it was edited and modified numerous times during the elections in some countries of the former Yugoslavia. But other than that legendary scene, there is little else to be shown in the rest of the film. It’s a standard cheap partisan film, which means propaganda that offers some good parts at best. Velimir ‘Bata’ Živojinović is good as the title hero, yet the only clever moment that his role offered was the one where he disguises himself in a Nazi uniform to fool the Nazi spy into telling him secret information, while the rest is just your run-of-the-mill cheap action and fighting that seems as if came from Bollywood. Humourless, overlong and amateurish, with some blunders that are too obvious (in one scene, you can see a woman in a short skirt, even though the story is suppose to be set during World War II) and a dated Yugoslav ideology, “Walter” is non-the-less still a solid partisan film that has charm, even if it was just based on pure nostalgia values, and a sweet harmonic score which is why it enjoys cult status.

Grade:+

The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent; Thriller comedy, UK, 1936; D: Alfred Hitchcock, S: John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, Robert Young

World War I. A British officer is surprised when he reads in the newspaper that he supposedly died from flu, but the head of the British intelligence explains him that it was done to make him a secret agent. Given a new name, Ashenden, he is sent to a Swiss town to discover a German spy who plans to turn the Arabs against the British in the war. Upon arriving to his hotel, he is pleasantly surprised that he was also equipped with a fake wife, Elsa, and a sloppy agent, the General. After the General kills a man suspected to be the spy on a mountain who turns out to have been innocent, Elsa decides to quit her job. She leaves with womanizer Marvin, but he turns out to be the spy. In a train crash, Marvin and the General die, while Ashenden and Elsa fall in love.

Following the success of his classic “The 39 Steps”, Alfred Hitchcock crafted a similar film “follow-up” that again impresses with a meticulous blend of thriller and comedy, elegant style and old-school narration that even tops the previous movie in the first half. John Gielgud may be an odd choice for the hero – some critics complained so much about his casting that he hasn’t appeared in a next film for almost 17 years – yet the exposition is so spot-on, so crammed with energy that it brings down the house: from the amusing opening at the fake funeral where a butler tries to pick up the empty coffin with one hand and Ashenden’s protests as to why he was reported “dead” up to the hilarious moment where he, entering his job as a secret agent, discovers he was given a secret identity – equipped with an attractive wife. When his fellow secret agent “the General” (Peter Lorre) discovers that, he starts a comical protest in anger because he “hasn’t been appointed with a wife” too. The film may be “Hitchcock light”, but it does carry all of his trademarks. Actually, if the suspenseful sequence on the mountain and the dog was just a little bit longer, it could have been one of the best from the “master of suspense”. “The Secret Agent” really does end too abruptly – it needed at least one more suspenseful moment before the end to work fully – but there is simply no way it won’t please the audience on the lookout for a classic with taste.

Grade:++

Kimagure Orange Road

Kimagure Orange Road; Animated fantasy romantic comedy series, Japan, 1987; D: Osamu Kobayashi, S: Toru Furuya, Hiromi Tsuru, Eriko Hara, Michie Tomizawa, Chieko Honda, Naoko Matsui

Teenager Kyosuke Kasuga moved with his family 7 times already because he and his sisters Kurumi and Manami posses “the power”, i.e. telekinetic abilities. Their father, a photographer, is on the other hand “normal”. In school, Kyosuke falls in love with the rebellious Ayukawa Madoka, but decides to lead a spare relationship with another girl who already fell in love with him, Hikaru, since he doesn’t want to break her heart. Ayukawa finds a part time job as a waitress in ABCB café while Kyosuke goes through numerous adventures with her. In the end, Kyosuke and Ayukawa kiss.

Sometimes the viewers are waiting for years and years for a new story to be filmed that would encompass a theme precisely they want and that would look as if it was made just for them. But they don’t know that often such a story was already made in the past, except that they don’t know about it. Yet, even though it’s from the past, when you look at it for the first time, it seems new. “ Kimagure Orange Road” is an anime Coelacanth, a forgotten jewel that almost nobody knows of, but a one which can be found in the long list of past ‘archeological’ anime. The animation is rather dated and some will find the hero’s flip-flop between two girls contrived, but in any other way the story would quickly end and wouldn’t develop the way it does, turning into a quiet delight. In one amusing episode at the beginning, Kyosuke wants to use his “power” to score during a basketball game so that he could impress Ayukawa, but then decides it wouldn’t “be honest” and thus plays normally, eventually losing in the game. Later, while sitting alone in the stadium, he thinks about his dilemma and nonchalantly uses his “power” to throw the ball across the whole stadium into the net – not knowing Hikaru accidentally saw him and fell in love when she saw that move, leaving it only to the viewer to realize and comprehend the irony of chance.

The story has wit: when Kyosuke forgets about his first date with Hikaru and comes too late to the place they were suppose to meet, he finds that she wrote her anger on the bulletin board, stating: “Kyosuke is a jerk!” Every time an author incorporates fantasy elements into a fairly straight looking story, he/she better have a good point for it, not to make it look as if it was there without any reason. Here, though, that concept – Kyosuke having telekinetic abilities – was exploited nicely when he, occasionally, wants the mill to “run his way” for a change: when Hikaru wants to take him to the ABCB café, he immediately wants to stop it because of fear that Ayukawa, who works there, will regard them as a couple. Alas, he uses the “power” to jam the door so that Hikaru won’t be able to open it and they would stay there, whereas when they eventually do get out he uses his ability again humorously to keep stalling it – to make the train crossing signal turned on as long as possible, even though that causes a giant traffic jam.

In one hilarious scene, he even accidentally teleports himself naked in a car in front of a love couple. One of the sweetest romantic moments, though, comes so swiftly and light that it has universal appeal, both for fantasy and drama fans, in the episode where Ayukawa gave the main hero instructions and then secretly inserted possible test questions in the menu when he came to the ABCB café, which shows unprecedented care. Unfortunately, the show lost its way from episode 30 onwards since the authors started to trip too much over their own feet with far too many unnecessary time travelling/body switching episodes. Instead of being a romance, as it was at the start, the show eventually became just a collection of insane stories. And yet if one would have to circle out those rare examples of masterwork writing, then it can still be found here, in episodes 22 and 28, which are perfect. The series ends with a bang, a very unusual end that made as much right as much as it did wrong. Unassuming and clumsy, with sweet 80s flair and fantastic music, “Orange Road” reminds a lot of “Maison Ikkoku”, and even though it doesn’t reach the latter’s heights since it’s too mild and hits too many false notes, it is still a small romance classic. Even “Maison” made mistakes, but when it did, its mistakes still seemed so much better than the mistakes “Orange Road” did.

Grade:++

House on Haunted Hill

House on Haunted Hill; Horror, USA, 1999; D: William Malone, S: Geoffrey Rush, Ali Larter, Taye Diggs, Famke Janssen, Peter Gallagher, Jeffrey Combs

In an asylum, the patients started a mutiny, killed the sadistic doctor who performed experiments on them and set the building on fire. Some 60 years later, the eccentric tycoon Stephen Price constructed a mansion on the ruins of the asylum, for his wife Evelyn. Five people were invited to come to the mansion and spend the night: Sara, Eddie, Melissa, Donald and Pritchett. When they enter, metal bars prevent them to exit until tomorrow. Strange things start happening: Melissa disappears while Evelyn is found dead. But Evelyn just pretended and kills Donald. The ghosts capture everyone in the end, except Sara and Eddie who manage to escape.

Horror remake of an '59 original with the same title, "House on Hunted Hill" is originally directed, but in the end still a cliched sprout of its genre which is dramaturgically on thin ice that breaks more and more towards the ice. The story doesn't lack suspenseful scenes full of adrenaline, like in the exposition where the mad doctor is performing an operation on a patient who is still awake, but then gets stopped and killed by other patients, yet to complain a horror film that it's too suspenseful would be as if one would complain that a comedy is too funny. Still, "House" is just a sufficient achievement and nothing more whose greatest flaw are too many one-dimensional characters and cheap style. The best scenes are the ones in fast-forward loop, like the one of the arrival of a demon or a monitor on the camera where the protagonists are watching the disappearance of her colleague, yet humor and intelligence would have given the story more color.

Grade:+

Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea

Gake no Ue no Ponyo; Animated fantasy adventure, Japan, 2008; D: Hayao Miyazaki, S: Hirko Doi, Yuria Nara, Tomoko Yamaguchi, Kazushige Nagashima

A fish-girl, Ponyo, who lives in father's Fujimoto underwater home, curiously swims to the shore of a port town where she is found and saved by a boy, Sosuke, who puts her in a can with water and brings her along to kindergarten. Ponyo gets retrieved back by Fujimoto, but decides she wants to be a human, grows arms and escapes to go back to Sosuke. That causes the flooding of the town. Sosuke and Ponyo go to search for Sosuke's mother Lisa. In the end, Fujimoto and the sea goddess agree to let Ponyo stay in human form.

One last time, the animation veteran Hayao Miyazaki again returned from retirement to direct his 10th and final film and deliver another pure anime jewel to the world. "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea", even though not Miyazaki's best achievement, is a return to his old shape and a spiritual successor to his "Kiki's Delivery Service" and almost all of the great animes he made in the 80s, his most creative phase. Unlike his last two films, "Spirited Away" and "Howl's Mowing Castle", where he went overboard with the phantasmagorical, here he kept a fantasy story with a measure, creating a gentle and wonderful film with a pure heart, and surprisingly addicting water fascination. A simple story (friendship between a boy and an unidentified fish-girl species) that mirrors "The Little Mermaid" became a likable base for a poetic film, filled with neat animation, great shot composition and humor that simply glides throughout. Some scenes are amusingly charming (after a flood hit the port town and placed it under water, fish can be seen swimming through its streets) while other are irresistibly charming (the enchanting moment where Ponyo hugs Sosuke so hard that it leaves a bruise on both of their faces). Innocent, sympathetic and harmless, with a surreal ending that can be forgiven, "Ponyo" is a wonderful relaxed fun that leaves a load of positive energy.

Grade:+++

The Samurai

Le Samouraï; Crime-drama, France/ Italy, 1967; D: Jean-Pierre Melville, S: Alain Delon, François Périer, Nathalie Delon, Cathy Rosier

Jeff Costello is a payed hitman who lives alone in an apartment with a bird in a birdcage. After an assignment, where he killed some club owner, he gets picked up by the police in a routine gathering of potential suspects. Even though he has an in advance prepared alibi from a hired prostitute, the Commissioner is certain he is the killer. Still, due to lack of evidence, he is released. Due to such a blunder, the mafia boss decides to kill Costello. Still, Costello kills him. He bonds with a singer in a night club and deliberately points with an empty gun towards her so that he gets shot by the police.

Director Jean-Pierre Melville - whose quote that "even the worse director can once make a great film" became famous - and his sad-melancholic-minimalistic crime drama "The Samurai" often get mention from critics at numerous occasions. It's a matter of an intelligent and calm film where the protagonist Costello, played by the famous Alain Delon, is not portrayed as a bad guy but as a lonely outsider, and, as the title suggests, as a "modern Samurai". Of course, as a realist, Melville never tries to "polish up" the bleak story: during the (only shown) assignment, when Costello meets his victim who asks for his name, he replies with: "It's not important" before he shoots him. There's a lack of that distinctive "coolness" factor and a surplus of pretentiousness, yet Melville leads the film economically whereas his cohesive low-key style is good.

Grade:+++

Spider-Man 3

Spider-Man 3; Action fantasy drama, USA, 2007; D: Sam Raimi, S: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haiden Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rosemary Harris, James Cromwell, Theresa Russell

When she gets fired due to bad acting, Mary Jane starts distancing herself from Peter Parker. An extraterrestrial symbiote merges with Peter who starts behaving darker and breaking the rules: he takes a dark Spider-Man costume, flirts with Grace and causes photographer Eddie to get fired. Marko, a convict who killed Peter’s uncle to get his money to pay for his sick daughter, falls in an accelerator and becomes Sandman, a robber who steals across town. Peter eventually gets himself rid from the symbiote, which lands on Eddie who transforms into Venom and teams up with Sandman. They kidnap Mary Jane, but Harry and Spider-Man team up and save her. Sandman and Venom die, Harry dies.

After Sam Raimi managed to “outsmart” the producers and raise the bar with the 2nd film, which amazed with rarely seen drama for a super-hero film, the expectations were high for “Spider-Man 3”, yet all the fans got was a cold shower since it turned out the creativity again lost the battle with the clichés. The film starts off promisingly, again featuring that refreshing drama when Peter Parker talks with his aunt May about how he plans to propose Mary Jane. But, just as he is driving in his motorcycle on the street, the film makes the first wrong step when he is picked up and dragged into the sky by the New Goblin/ Harry on his flying machine, which ends up in such a over-the-top fight between them across the city that not even Peter Griffin and that chicken from “Family Guy” would be ashamed off. The film simply has way too much “hero-gets-saved-in-the-nick-of-time” clichés, silly stunts and CGI overkill to carry it without a consequence. The only moment in that fight that makes the viewer stop in amazement is the one where Peter sets up a spider’s web across two walls that cause Harry to trip and fall on the ground – and get so seriously hurt that Peter has to call the ambulance. But then we find out he has – amnesia! Why the writers had to make up such absurd clichés can probably be explained by the fact that the producers invested a lot of money, and wanted a lot of crowd-pleasing moments to ensure themselves a success, among them forcing action sequences that don’t have any purpose at all.

The Sandman character is pure Marvel trash, yet at least Raimi puts a little ironic jab at the story when, after battling him, Peter takes off his Spider-Man mask, discovers his hair is full of sand, and just says to himself: “…Where do all this guys keep coming from?” Sandman, Venom, Mary Jane-Peter love relationship, Harry-Peter rivalry and an extraterrestrial symbiote that creates an evil Spider-Man – the story tried to cram 5 plots into one, but it just crashed over itself, whereas the storyline about Spider-Man battling with his evil self resembled at times too much to the one in “Superman 3”. Tobey Maguire is again in very good shape as the nerdy hero Peter, effortlessly doing many comical scenes that are a delight. Some even found his transformation into the “bad Spider-Man” being a political allegory about certain powerful politicians at that time who liked to “break the rules” and use “dirty” methods to achieve their goals. Though, again, the film went overboard with some of those “bad guy” moments: when Peter starts dancing at the night club to make Mary Jane jealous, it all seems plausible, but when he starts swinging on a Chandelier the whole thing turns into Bollywood. Still, even though it was dead-set at becoming wasted, the authors still inserted some ambitious details and complex drama that is food for thought, which makes the film a great topic of discussion. While standing in a queue, some guy once asked his friend: “Have you seen “Spider-Man 3”? The main actor cries for half of the film!” , which evidently shows that this isn’t your run-of-the-mill superhero series.

Grade:+

Spider-Man 2

Spider-Man 2; Action drama, USA, 2004; D: Sam Raimi, S: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Alfred Molina, J.K. Simmons, Rosemary Harris, Dylan Baker

Peter Parker found a new apartment in New York, but is unable to find a job. His big love Mary Jane became an actress and engaged herself to Harry, who still hates Spider-Man because he thinks he killed his father. The new villain is Dr. Octavius, a scientist with 4 mechanical arms, who creates a dangerous source of energy. He dies during an experiment, while Mary and Harry discover that Peter is Spider-Man.

A long time ago, only "Terminator 2" and "Aliens" were sequels considered better than the original. In the meantime, that stopped being an endemic phenomenon. "Spider-Man 2" is in absolutely every aspect, absolutely every detail superior to the 1st film, a story where director Sam Raimi and screenwriter Alvin Sargent somehow managed to gain the upper hand compared to the producers and actually dared to film something new, which is why the sequel is, disregarding the banal-wacky bad guy Dr. Octavius, truly interesting. The biggest change is that "Spider-Man 2" is this time a drama, a quiet social critique of the world (Peter barely survives due to his financial difficulties!) with enough emotions to fill even "Terms of Endearment" and a fantasy part that serves as a catalyst of the relationships of the characters.

The brilliant action choreography is still there, but this time it seems as if it is just a sly pretext for the long dramatic scenes in between in which the authors actually wanted to say something. The film is filled with memorable moments that flow so naturally: in one scene, Peter, with Pizzas in his hand, hides behind a corner and shows up again as Spider-Man, while some passer-by shouts: "Look! Spider-Man stole that guy's Pizzas!" After his powers start to fade away, Spider-Man has to get off a building in an elevator, where some curious man also enters it and observes the superhero. Some super-hero cliches are still there, yet there are also some scenes that have never before been seen in any kind of super-hero film so far. Especially fascinating is the montage of a carefree Peter in tune to the classic song "Rain Drops Keep Fallin' On My Head". Who ever placed that song there is a genius.

Grade:++

Spider-Man

Spider-Man; Fantasy, USA, 2002; D: Sam Raimi, S: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe, James Franco, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons

New York. Peter Parker is a clumsy and unpopular teenager living with his uncle and aunt, whereas he is in love with Mary Jane from the neighborhood. He gets bitten by a mutated spider in a museum and, as a consequence, gets the powers of climbing up the walls, strength and throwing spider's web. When a burglar kills his uncle, Peter becomes Spider-Man and decides to fight against evil. Meanwhile, scientist Norman becomes the Green Goblin after getting fired and wants to take revenge on his colleagues, while his son Harry is also in love with Mary Jane. In a duel, Goblin throws his glider at Spider-Man, but dies himself from it. Mary falls for Peter, while Harry swears for revenge.

Back in '77, a low budget live action TV show about Spider-Man was made, an embarrassing experiment where the hero was fighting against the mafia (!), but the expensive movie version made for the big screen 25 years later isn't that much better either, except for the high production costs. Unfortunately, Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" is one long introduction to the series, and as such seems very stiff in forcefully setting up the beginning of the story. Some action sequences are spectacular (in one, Spider-Man uses his web to swing from a skyscraper down the road while the camera is following him), yet on the other hand many situations are unconvincing and naive - for instance, Peter tries his luck as a wrestler and let's some burglar run away. But when that same burglar kills his uncle, he also sees his face behind the Spider-Man mask. Of course, the authors "kept" the hero's identity and his honor clean by having the burglar conveniently trip down a pipe and fall out of the window, dying. Tobey Maguire, on the other hand, is surprisingly good as Peter, and Willem Dafoe is also great as the villain. Raimi's direction was predictably "numbed down" by the big budget since the producers wanted to play it safe, yet he still managed to insert solid details about growing up and some ironic references to "Superman", like when Peter takes his shirt off like Clark Kent, or when his aunt tells him: "You work too much. You're not Superman, you know".

Grade:+

Night Moves

Night Moves; Thriller-drama, USA, 1975; D: Arthur Penn, S: Gene Hackman, Janet Ward, Susan Clark, Jennifer Warren, Kenneth Mars, Harris Yulin, James Woods, Melanie Griffith

Detective Harry Moseby is rather relaxed and unorthodox. One day, he gets a new assignment: actress Arlene hires him to find her rebellious daughter Delly. Harry quickly finds her in Florida, at her stepfather Tom and his colleague Paula. During diving, Delly accidentally discovers a corpse in a sunken ship while Tom promises he will call the police. Harry escorts Delly to her home, but she dies the next day in a mysterious car accident when she was shooting a film in a car driven by a stuntman, Ziegler. Harry comes back to Florida and discovers that Delly's death was ordered by Tom because the corpse indicated at his smuggling business. Harry beats him up, but gets attacked in a ship by an airplane flown by Ziegler, who dies. Harry survives while the ship is driving around in circles.

Unknown film "Night Moves" from the rich opus of director Arthur Penn, the author of such classics like "Bonnie & Clyde" and "Little Big Man", is a crime film that is a one constant queue of surprises. In the exposition, the story shows the private detective Harry, played brilliantly by Gene Hackman, as an unfocused and relaxed kind of guy who often misses out on small details, and as such is wrong for this kind of job, yet is still hired to find the daughter of actress Arlene (who also at one point says she has "silicon breasts"), following the footsteps of crime classics "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Big Sleep". But 60 minutes into the film, the hero already finds her. The case is solved already half way into the film, which is why the story is the whole time avoiding the cliches and casually traverses into drama with a different subplot, always having interesting ideas (the bad guy attacks the hero with a shell!). The much talked about ending is good, symbolic, but not as strong as the endings in some other great 70s films, like "Being There".

Grade:+++